Fire Up Prospects And Inspire Them To Hire You

Fire Up Prospects And Inspire Them To Hire You

Tim Fitzpatrick
Stop putting out the same old boring content that puts people to sleep. Instead, transform content from boring to brilliant. Turn marketing from frustrating to fun. And convert results from pitiful to profitable. Our special guest today is going to show us how by using Story Powered Marketing. Hi, I am Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing, where we believe you must remove your revenue roadblocks if you want to accelerate growth and marketing should not be difficult. Thank you so much for taking the time to tune in. I am super excited to have with me today Tom Ruwitch from Story Power Marketing. Tom, thanks so much for taking the time.

Tom Ruwitch
Hey, Tim. Very happy to be here. Thanks.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Awesome. Yeah, I'm excited to dig into this. Before we get to the meat of the interview here, I want to ask you a few rapid fire questions, help us get to know you. Are you ready to jump in here?

Tom Ruwitch
I am ready.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Okay. When you're not working, how do you like to spend your time?

Tom Ruwitch
I like to get out to the country. I'm in St. Louis, Missouri. And the southern half of Missouri is the Ozark mountains. Beautiful country. Our family has a place down on a stream in the hills. Love to get out there, hike around the hills, do some fishing, kayak a little bit, just sit on a chair overlooking the scenery. And it's a two hour drive from my house. It feels like it's 2000 miles away.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Oh, man. I know what you mean. Isn't that crazy how sometimes you just don't have to drive very far to feel like you're in a totally different place?

Tom Ruwitch
Absolutely. Yeah.

Tim Fitzpatrick
What's your hidden talent?

Tom Ruwitch
Wow. A lot of people tell me that my hidden talent is making complex stuff easy. My first job out of college was a school teacher. Then I was a professional journalist, newspaper reporter. And in both of those jobs, I had to take content, turn it into something that somebody who might not easily understand it, will understand it. And I've translated that into the work I do as a marketer. And people tell me all the time that I'm really good at that, taking complex stuff, presenting it in ways that's easy to understand.

Tim Fitzpatrick
That's an awesome hidden talent because I think so many people overcomplicate marketing just in general. Right. It is so easy to overcomplicate things, but it really is a skill to break things down into simple, easy to understand elements. And I know you're going to do that for us today, too. What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given?

Tom Ruwitch
So many good pieces of advice. The one that I lean into a lot in my business is something I think I first heard from Jim Rohn and he said, turn frustration into fascination rather than wallow and being frustrated. And this guy or this gal or this thing or this event or this outcome frustrates me. Take a step back and look deeply and be fascinated, be curious, ask yourself why is this behavior happening? Why did this outcome happen? Why is this the case? And the more fascinated you are and the more you look at things with that approach as opposed to just being frustrated, the more you'll get out of life and the more you'll overcome those small defeats or small frustrations and step beyond them.

Tim Fitzpatrick
What's one thing about you that surprises people?

Tom Ruwitch
Wow maybe the fact that deep down I'm an introvert, that I enjoy my alone time and I can find energy in being alone. Because when I'm with people in social situations, in situations like this, I am very comfortable and very outgoing and can do my thing. But deep down I'm introverted and that surprises people when I tell them.

Tim Fitzpatrick
You and me both. What does success mean to you?

Tom Ruwitch
Wow. Success means being able to A experience, life on your own terms, to do what you want, how you want, when you want it, and not constantly being feeling as if you're making compromises or sacrifices. Now at the same time, I do make sacrifices for my family but ultimately the choice is that I wish to I put my family first, my kids first, my wife first. And so if I am enjoying my time at my farm a couple of hours away from here with my family, if I am making the choices that I wish to make, I feel successful. The bottom line in the business and profits and all those things are important. But that's not the first line of success, that's not how I measure it.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Where's your happy place?

Tom Ruwitch
I already told you about it. 2 hours from here, 2000 miles away at my farm in Crawford County, Missouri, on the banks of the Huza Creek and standing in the middle of that creek with a fly fishing rod in my hand, that's a happy place.

Tim Fitzpatrick
How often do you get down there?

Tom Ruwitch
Wow. We try to get down there at least once a month. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. In the warm weather we get down there more often. So I'll be getting down there in a week or two and it's kind of the middle of nowhere. The next valley over from where we have our farm, there were people living there into the early 80s without electricity.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Wow.

Tom Ruwitch
I mean right? Yeah. When they talk about hillbillies, I guess a derogatory term, but yeah, this is that part of the country, it's way out there. But just a few years ago we got high speed internet. So, on one hand, while I like to go there to escape, the fact that we have the high speed internet allows me to go down there on, let's say, a Wednesday night, put in a little bit of work on Thursday, Friday morning, and then be there without having to drive out late after Friday, that kind of thing. So I have to resist the urge to open my laptop now that we have Internet down there, but generally I'm able to get away and spend more time there. Now that we have Internet, I just have to be careful not to abuse that privilege.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Righ. Yeah. What qualities do you value in the people you spend time with?

Tom Ruwitch
Honesty. Forthrightness. I don't like people who are constantly trying to calculate what the other person needs to hear or I should say wants to hear, and then BS, honesty is probably the number one quality. But I also want people who are curious and who listen. Conversations are best when everybody at the table wants to hear from everybody else. Those are the kinds of people I want to be around.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Tell me more about what you're doing with Story Power Marketing.

Tom Ruwitch
Sure.

Tim Fitzpatrick
And how are you helping them?

Tom Ruwitch
Yeah. So coaches, consultants, anybody who's packaging their expertise for sale to serve clients. And I want to underline that word, underscore that word, serve clients. They're the people I like to work with and they hire me to power up their creative content and storytelling. And the reason is that they know that content is important. Social media, email, blogs, videos, so on and so forth. But they struggle. They're dishing out that same old boring, blah blah blah information only content. And then they get frustrated when prospects tune out and move on. And they can't figure out why. When it works, they don't know why it worked. When it doesn't work, they don't know what they need to do to fix it. So I teach my clients and work with them to transform their content from boring to brilliant and in so doing, to overcome writer's block, to overcome all of that frustration and make it feel more fun and more fulfilling. And I said fun. Content marketing can be fun when you have the systems and the processes and a way to do it. And ultimately it's about the bottom line for your business, getting prospects tune in, turn on, to see you as the expert and the leader in your industry so that they choose to hire you when the time comes. So you're transforming the bottom line. And the way I do that is by helping them to teaching them how to create better emails and better LinkedIn posts or Facebook posts or better videos. And the thing about it is that these things don't live in a silo. When you do these things effectively, you can repurpose content across multiple media. And a lot of the work that you do when you are creating effective content is all about getting to know your prospects or clients so that it also helps you become a better service provider, build longer lasting, deeper connections with your prospects, and ultimately maximize the lifetime value of a customer relationship.

The 3E Framework That Keeps Storytelling Simple

Tim Fitzpatrick
I think a lot of us tend to think, gosh man, I don't have an interesting story to tell. Yeah, I'm just a normal person. How do you respond to that?

Tom Ruwitch
Yeah, I hear it all the time. I'm not a storyteller, I'm not a creative person, and so forth. Well, the great thing to know is that, number one, you do have interesting stories to tell about yourself. You just may not realize it yet. But more importantly, the story doesn't have to be about you, at least not initially. What good storytelling and good marketing communications are all about is understanding what makes your prospects and your clients tick. We have a framework that we use in building the story and doing what we call story discovery, which is the three E framework. And it's all about shining the spotlight on your prospects and your clients. And the first E is empathize. Where are they now? What are they feeling? What's keeping them up at night? What's frustrating them? The second E is envision. Where do they want to go? What's the mountaintop look like? What is it that they aspire to achieve? Now, in some cases, you may be able to help them envision things that they otherwise wouldn't be able to see. But often, probably most often, your clients and your prospects have a vision of where they want to go, and you need to tune into that. You need to envision where it is they want to go. So empathy, envision, and the journey from before to after that your clients want to take from frustrated to fulfilled, from lost to found, from scared to confident and courageous, from confused to clear, all of those journeys are possible because of the third E, because you enable the journey. You enable the journey with your products, with your services, with your coaching, with your professional service, whatever it may be, with the tips that you provide in your content. And so if you understand where your prospects are, where they want to go, and how you can enable that journey, you have the building blocks that you need to create powerful stories. The stories themselves might just be anecdotes that you draw from your own slice of life that you see in a movie that happened between you and a client, a story about their own experience, but you always can relate those anecdotes back to those threes. Where is the customer empathy? Where do they want to go? Envision and how is it you help get them there? Enable. And so what we do is we teach the process of discovering the story and then assembling the story. And you don't have to dig deep into your own depths of, oh, interesting things that happened to me when I was a five year old kid or when I went to college. Those stories will come. We'll help you find them. But it starts by shining the spotlight on clients and prospects.

Tim Fitzpatrick
There's a couple of things I want to pull out here, Tom, because you dropped a ton of value here. One of the things that you said was really understanding your ideal clients. And to me, that's where everything starts with marketing. If we don't understand that, the wheels come off everything else after.

Tom Ruwitch
Amen.

Tim Fitzpatrick
And so we really have to take that time to understand those people. And sometimes this is a process, right? Especially if you're just getting started out. You may not know, but we have to make some choices in the beginning, focus and do our best to start understanding who those ideal clients are.

Tom Ruwitch
Right.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Because once we can get into their head, then we can go through your framework, right, which is super simple. I love that it's easy for people to understand, but we can't create a message that's going to engage people until we first understand who those people are.

Tom Ruwitch
Right.

Storytelling Doesn't Have to Be So Complex

Tim Fitzpatrick
Man, I love that. When we think about storytelling, storytelling has been around for ages. A lot of people talk about the hero's journey, which can be it's simple enough, but it can get a little bit complex. Right. And so I think sometimes people get lost when people talk about the hero's journey. Storytelling doesn't have to be so complex. What are your thoughts there?

Tom Ruwitch
Yeah, well, I agree. Storytelling does not have to be so complex. The hero's journey has a number of elements to it. I hear a lot of storytelling coaches who want to liken storytelling for business, to writing screenplay for a movie, and you have conflict and resolution and all of these different steps. And there's a guy out there who teaches a storytelling method that's I think a nine or a ten step method for storytelling for business. And call me simple, but if I hear about a nine or ten step process for telling stories for business, I think that's probably six or seven steps too many. And I have clients who have come to me and said, oh, man, I don't want to have to think about all of these elements just to write a blog post or just to write an email. And they don't it doesn't have to be so darn complex. And this goes back to, I guess, my superpower trying to boil this down to a repeatable, systematic approach where you can just focus on a few simple things. And if you do that time after time after time after time, you'll be able to put content out there that is captivating and entertaining and story powered and people will tune in.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Is it a matter of once we know who our ideal clients are, you kind of talked about this empathizing. How are they feeling? What are the problems and the pain points that they have? And then within envision, figuring out what are the results that they're looking for? What are the outcomes that they want to experience? Is it really as simple as creating a list of these various elements and just having that to go back to as we start to create content?

Tom Ruwitch
Yes, it can be that simple. I'll give you a great example, I work with an executive coach who her work is with business owners to help them get off the hamster wheel and help them not feel so stressed and so on and so forth. And before she hired us to work with her, she had written a blog post about delegation. It's one of the things she teaches. It's a valuable skill for a business owner. She teaches delegation. She teaches time management. She teaches effective communications. She teaches organizational structure, all sorts of things that are really, really valuable. But her blog post was effectively the same old boring lecture from on high that you can find hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times over on the Internet. And it was something to the effect of delegation is one of the most important business skills that an owner can master. To delegate properly, you need to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Here are five tips to delegate. All right? So nobody reads it. Nobody gets to the bottom and sees the call to action. Nobody picks up the phone. Nobody schedules a meeting with that executive coach, even though there is enormous value in what she teaches. And she can help the business owner. So she hires us. We come in, and we start to have a conversation where we're looking at those three e's. Where is the business owner now? Where does the business owner want to go, and how do you enable that? Well, part of the conversation was, the business owner is feeling stuck. The business owner feels like he has the weight of the world on his shoulders. The business owner wishes that he could get away, spend less time in the office, spend more time out there. We were talking about this in sort of hypotheticals, but then I asked her, well, let's try to come up with a story to demonstrate that. She said, Well, I have an actual story with one of my clients. And she told me the story of a business owner who had owned the business for 20 years and had never taken a vacation longer than a long weekend, never gotten away more than a Friday through Monday. Why? For all those reasons that I said he worried that if he went away, all hell would break loose, that the phone would ring while he was on vacation, that when he came back, he'd have to put together all the pieces and so on and so forth. And she taught him how to flatten his organization, how to delegate more effectively, how to prepare for that. And as a result, this guy went on vacation and had a ball. And when he returned, everything was running smoothly. In fact, it was running better than before. And so the post that went out the door, the email, excuse me, that went out the door and also was a blog post had this subject line and headline how a stressed out owner let go and got away. How a stressed out owner let go and got away. And that title alone is a story for stressed out, stuck, unable to go on vacation after letting go, getting away, relieved. And the photo that went with the email in the blog post was guy on a hammock on a beach overlooking the ocean sunset. That alone. So if you are a business owner who's a good prospect for this business coach who is stressed out, feeling the way to the world, whether you go on vacation or not, you're going to read that. And what you read is a story where she tells the story of that business owner and how he finally got away and went on vacation and sat on the beach and had a ball and returned. And then underneath that, or the transition, is what had changed for him. He learned to delegate. Here are some tips to delegate. Now you have their attention. Now they're leaning in. Now they're reading those tips and they're thinking, she knows her stuff. But the only reason that they care to read those tips and the only reason they're thinking she knows her stuff and they're paying attention is because she evoked the story of the journey from before to after. She empathized, she understood what was holding back that business owner. She understood what the other side of the mountain looks like. And it's not, hey, if you work with me, you'll know how to delegate. That's not what they're buying. What they're buying is that week on the beach, on a hammock, looking at the sunset, that feeling of relief, that feeling of getting away. And she understood that. And that's all she had to understand. That journey empathize envision and how it is that she enables the journey. And in this particular case, the way she enables the journey is by delegating, teaching delegating the clients to delegate. It's that simple.

Tim Fitzpatrick
One of the things you touched on earlier was our message. It's got to focus on the clients, right? They don't care about us. The only thing they care about is how we can help them get from where they are to where they want to be. And that example, that title in a short title, focused on the problem, which grabs them in and then paints the picture of what life looks like after, which is why I think it worked so well. And you really did a great job of kind of breaking that down where it's like, look, she still communicated the same type of information as she did before, but she's using story to bring that content to life. And grab people because it's not the look, we can all find five tips to delegate, but it's man, I'm feeling that exact way that gets me to continue to read the information that's there. And it also starts to get me feeling, oh, my gosh, she gets me.

Tom Ruwitch
She gets me. So important. And that's a couple of things in what you said. Number one is that blog post that she previously wrote. Here are some tips about delegation. If you Google delegation tips, you'll probably find 800 blog posts that are exactly the same and nobody reads that and says, she gets me. And by the way, I say 800 posts, there are probably 8000 now that you can press a button and ask ChatGPT.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, that's right.

Tom Ruwitch
Therein lies the lesson as well. Just because a robot can in a coherent way provide tips or advice, it doesn't have that personality. It doesn't really connect you to the reader in the way that the stories that we just shared will. In the end, that is what you're doing with good content. You're trying to build a relationship. You're trying to show what it's going to be like if you connect with me. Oh, you get me. You understand me. It's all about building a sense of knowing and liking and trusting. And if you tell their story, starting with empathy, following with envisioning, checking the butt, wow, that is what I want. I want to let go and get away. If you can empathize and envision in ways that the prospect says, wow, you get me. Now they're on the edge of their seat and back to that subject line, how a stressed out owner let go and got away. A good tip for writing headlines and subject lines is to inspire curiosity. That subject line, using the word how, it doesn't answer the question how a stressed out owner let go and got away. And so anybody who reads the subject line is thinking, I'm stressed, I want to let go. I want to get away. I'm on the edge of my seat. How is it that you do that? Yeah, how is it that I'm going to let go and get away? Well, let me tell you about this thing called delegation. And now you've completely flipped the script. Instead of being a lecturer from on high saying delegation is really important and the person yawning and tuning out, you have somebody on the edge of their seat who's asking you, hey, how am I going to let go and get away? Tell me, tell me, tell me. And you're telling them about delegation. And then there's a call to action at the bottom of the post saying, call me so we can discuss how I can help you delegate better.

How to Overcome Writer's Block

Tim Fitzpatrick
The other beautiful thing about that headline is people that aren't in that boat, they're gone, right? And we don't need those people. So it's attracting the exact people that she wanted to work with and everybody else is going to go away. And that's totally fine, right? One of the biggest things with content creation is people are just like, man, where am I going to come up with all these ideas? Right? And you touched on this earlier, too, like, how do I overcome writer's block? I've got to write these things. What tips do you have there?

Tom Ruwitch
Well, when I'm asked this question, I'm asked it often. I'll often cite a guy named Eugene Schwartz. Eugene Schwartz was a copywriter in the very, very successful, very prolific, wrote a book called Breakthrough Advertising, which many copywriters consider to be the bible of the craft. And Eugene Schwartz never suffered from writer's block. And when people would ask him about that, he would say, copy is not written, copy is assembled. And when you suffer from writer's block, what's usually happening is you're sitting in front of a blank screen, and you're thinking, once upon a time, now what? And you're stuck, and you're waiting for the creative juices to flow. You're thinking that this is some magic thing, and you need the muse to come and strike. Or you just start feeling like, oh, I don't have it. I'm not a creative person. But what Schwartz is saying, and what I've adopted from what Schwartz said, is that, no, it's not just about sitting in front of a blank screen and then having creative magic flow out of you. It's about gathering the building blocks and then assembling them into familiar structures. So that's where what I call story discovery. And really what Schwartz was talking about is market research. That's where it's so important to begin with that three E story discovery. Understand everything you can about your prospects and what makes them tick, and what would be relevant to them and what it is that they aspire to and so forth. And then think about the various tips and services and products that you offer. So in the case of that executive coach, I listed a handful of them, delegation and time management and effective communications and so forth. It's a finite list. The stuff that you sell, the services you provide, the tips that you might offer. There are only so many of them. But if you have gathered the building blocks, the three E's, to understand how those tips fit with where the prospect is and where they want to go, then you can begin to discover the stories. Remember how I described what was going on with this executive coach? What we did is we first talked about, where are they? Where do they want to go, and how is it that you help delegation? Then I said, well, do you have any good delegation stories to tell that demonstrate that journey? Oh, I have one. That's great. A client experience. Okay, but here's a ChatGPT tip.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yes.

Tom Ruwitch
It doesn't have to be a direct experience that a client has or a direct experience that you have. Finding the anecdotes that you can use to deliver the powerful story becomes easy if you know why you're telling the story, if you have the three E's figured out. So here's a prompt that I've taught this executive coach. You go to ChatGPT and you say, I am an executive coach, and I help my clients learn to delegate more effectively before they delegate. They are. And now I'm filling in the blanks with what I've discovered about them. Empathy. They're feeling stuck. They feel like the weight of the world is on their shoulders, they don't want to go on vacation, so on and so forth when they learn to delegate. Now, I describe the envision part. So I'm not just saying to ChatGPT, write me a blog post about why delegation is important. It'll be the same old blah blah blah stuff. I am taking the story discovery that I've done and then I'm using a tool to help me assemble or really not even write it because I don't believe that ChatGPT. I'll get to that in a moment why you don't want to use ChatGPT as a ghost writer, but please come up and here's the key part of the prompt. Please provide to me some examples from real life literature, television, or movies that have stories demonstrating the power of delegation, as I've just described it. And it goes, and in the movie The Devil Wears Prada, blah blah, blah, blah blah in this book, blah blah, blah, blah blah. And when I did this with one of my clients, I said, which of these examples do you know well? Oh, I know that one and I know that one, and I know that one. And which one could you tell without relying on somebody else like the robot to tell the story for you? Oh, that one. So boom, it's now prompted a story. And the reason that I went into all that is because the process that you go through is you discover what the client and prospect story is framed in that three e's empathize, envision and so forth. You are aware of how you enable the journeys, and then what you're constantly doing is looking for hooks, entertaining things that you saw in a movie or read in a book, or that happened to you in your own life, slice of life stories, or that happened to your clients. And you can tell those little anecdotes as parables or fables to make the point. The point is, the story is the three E part, and if you're having trouble coming up with them, ChatGPT can help you. You then go and write the story or the email, but it's coming up with the idea and the hook that is most valuable. I even will do that from time to time. I'll take one that I've written and I'll say, here's an email about topic X. Here's the point I was making on topic X. Here's why this is important to my prospects, empathy and envision. And give me some other examples of stories I could tell drawing from literature, television, the arts, blah blah blah, and it'll give me story ideas. I'll be like, oh, I know that, I remember that episode, or I saw that movie. I'm going to use that as a hook and write an email, and then I do that in my own voice. That's a great way to use the robots and AI to help you over the hump. But even without the robots and AI, if you've done the three E story discovery, you will find yourself noticing something on TV, and you'll be like, oh, that's a great hook to tell a story about delegation. Or you'll start from the other direction. I want to tell a story about delegation. Let me think about a time in my life where I learned about the power of delegation, or a time in my life where I use time blocking to help. And if you're the executive coach, then it becomes easy. It feels like you're assembling building blocks as opposed to just sitting in front of a screen hoping the magic will come.

Tim Fitzpatrick
I love the idea of assembling. Right? So with your three E framework, you've got those building blocks, and once you have the framework in place, then it's your reticular activating system. Right. And your brain is looking for that. Right. It's like that concept of, oh, I just bought a Toyota Tundra, and now I see Toyota Tundras everywhere. Well, it's because you're honed in on it. When you've got the framework already in place, you're now looking for these things, and the inspiration is there in front of us every day. It's all over the place, right?

Tom Ruwitch
Exactly.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Look for it, take notes. And we should never have any issues of what we're going to write about. Honestly, one of the things I do, Tom, is I just have a note. That's just a list. And as things come up, I just put them on that list, and I know that I can go back to them. You pointed it out there's stories in TV and books, movies, and even just in stuff that happens in real life, right. From a marketing standpoint, one of the things as you were going through this, I don't know why this popped into my head, but it was a couple months ago, I saw a news clip about Bed, Bath and Beyond and all their struggles and the problems they were having. And they were talking about one of the specific executives there who was formerly at Target, and Target did really when he was at Target, he had a ton of success with private label branding and what classic mistake this goes to show you. Anybody can make this mistake. He thought man, this worked at Target. It's got to work at Bed Bath and Beyond. And it didn't. It failed miserably going back to Target market. What they did not realize is that name brand to people that were buying at Bed, Bath and Beyond was a huge thing. Right. And that was the article was talking about. That was one of the things I'm sure there were many that really led to their demise. And there's a marketing example that you or I could both use in what we're doing. Right, right. Look for those.

Tom Ruwitch
Yeah. The moral of the story could be there are a lot of ways that you could frame this up. But one of the morals of the story is just because it worked for Business X doesn't mean that you should just swipe it and plop it into your business. And you need a business strategy that is going to assess your particular situation in your particular market and so on and so forth, and adjust the tactics accordingly. Okay. So I could write a blog post about that. It's very important to assess the situation, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And what you have is yet another lecture from on high. That's just information only, and information is not enough. What you have to do is say, all right, here's the lesson. The tip of it's important to assess strategy, to draw from examples outside and use them when applicable, but to understand what works and what doesn't under your unique circumstances. But all that is is the enable. That's the tip. That's the service you're providing. Okay, so what is it that what's the story that you're telling that will resonate with your clients? Well, again, I don't know your clients, but I've run marketing firms and kind of have an understanding. Frustrated with the flood of here's how to do it tricks or swipe this tactic and frustrated with all the stops and starts. Try this. Doesn't work. Try another thing. Doesn't work. Swipe this, do that, whatever. So if you could express through a story, I have a client who experienced this, or when I was first starting my business, here's what happened. I used to just swipe the tactic from the next business over that was working. I would try it, it wouldn't work, and I would feel frustrated. All I want to do is have a clear and greater confidence that the things I'm putting to work are going to work. That's the picture or the story that you're selling, Tim, or that I'm selling. And then how do you enable that? Well, you enable that by developing a strategy that assesses the particulars of your business. Okay. And you could tell the story of Target versus Bed, Bath and Beyond as that hook. You could tell a story. I don't know. I think it's a great example, but without the story, the lesson is boring and not relevant.

Tim Fitzpatrick
But you can take those things, and you just have to figure out how you're going to weave that into the story to create that parable with, hey, this is why this happened, and then tie it back to the enable part of it.

Tom Ruwitch
Right.

Conclusion: Fire Up Prospects And Inspire Them To Hire You

Tim Fitzpatrick
I love it. Awesome stuff. Tom, any last minute thoughts you want to leave us with today?

Tom Ruwitch
Well, it's interesting because you asked the qualities that I like in people, and you asked me great advice, and they're all rooted in a similar theme. Curiosity, noticing, paying attention, instead of just, I'm frustrated and that's the end of it and I'm just going to wallow in my misery. No, be fascinated. Be interested. Be curious about why things were that way. I like the person who's a listener, not just a teller. The parting thought here is that the more curious you are, the more you develop a habit of noticing, paying attention what's going on around you, paying attention to what your prospects and clients are saying, paying attention to how does this thing that I just saw that's entertaining and interesting and making me smile, how might I turn that into a parable about my business and then recording it? All of those skills of noticing and curiosity can drive your business forward. Not just your marketing, but your business in general. There are lessons all around you if you open your eyes and ears and pay attention.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah, I love it. Tom, where can people learn more about you?

Tom Ruwitch
They can go to my website to Storypowermarketing.com, and when they go there, they're going to be prompted. There's a button in the upper right and a screen will pop up to join my email list. If you want to see me practice what I preach with my emails, you can sign up on the website. There's also a free resources link in the main menu where you can get access to a video training, a few downloads that will help you with this journey. And then also on LinkedIn. If you want to look me up on LinkedIn, I'm always happy to connect. And in the emails, I encourage people to reply and connect with me. And you're not going to end up getting shuttled off to some assistant who gives you a stock answer. I will reply directly and personally to anybody who reaches out to me by email.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Yeah. If you want to see what Tom's talking about in action, sign up for his email list. You will get a daily lesson in it. And Tom, just so folks know, you mainly help people through group coaching, correct?

Tom Ruwitch
Mainly, yeah. So there are a couple of ways to connect with me or to work with me. One is to hire me as a one on one consultant, and in many ways I'm a Fractional Marketing Officer, Chief Marketing Officer, under those circumstances. The majority of my clients are consuming programs that I've created, courses or being part of short duration boot camps and workshops, or longer duration masterminds, where we work together continuously to power up their creative content to understand how to bring technology to bear. So it's not just about creating the content, it's making sure that you get the content out there efficiently. And I have a division of my company that provides a technology marketing automation tech stack that we didn't talk about, but I help. And those who participate in my workshops or in my ongoing Mastermind have access to all of that and all that training.

Tim Fitzpatrick
Cool. I love it. So reach out to Tom. He obviously knows what the heck he's doing. Go over to Storypowermarketing.com. Tom, thank you for taking the time. I appreciate it. Those of you that are watching, listening, I appreciate you as well. We talked a lot about content marketing today. Messaging. Messaging is one of the nine revenue roadblocks we help clients remove so they can accelerate growth. If you want to find out which roadblocks are slowing down your growth, you can do that over revenueroadblockscorecard.com. You can also always connect with us over at rialtomarketing.com as well. So thank you so much. Appreciate. Until next time. Take care.